Friday, August 31, 2012

GOP Convention – The Debut of Romnyan


First, my apologies for neglecting the blog lately.  I had a spell of burnout and needed to take a break.  Now on with the post.

Today is the third night of the 2012 GOP Convention that will officially announce what we’ve already known for a while: they will publicly debut the ticket of Willard Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan as their ticket for President and vice President of the U.S. (hence the name: Romnyan).   Amidst the fears of Hurricane Isaac hitting Tampa (it landed near New Orleans instead – on the 7th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina hitting NOLA) causing the first night to be reduced to ten minutes,  the convention has left a series of questions still unanswered in regards to Willard and whether he should be president or not. 

First, why should we trust someone with Swiss bank accounts and tax shelters in the Caymans to run the one remaining superpower?  Romney still hasn’t released those tax returns outside of 2010 and part of 2011.  Yes, he’s said he’s released all he’s required to.  However, when your father set the precedent back in 1967, Mitt should’ve gotten the hint that this might be a good thing to get out in the open (in fact, the reasoning George Romney used was that just releasing one good year could be considered a fluke).    Mitt claims releasing the forms would just provide more ammo for his critics and, thus, will not release any more. 

Also, if Romney wants to be President shouldn’t he tell us what really went down?  At first he ran on his experience as CEO of Bain Capital but when people at Bain owned companies who lost their jobs come up, then Romney claims bringing up how Bain may have played a role in closing some factories and losing jobs is an attack and that his business experience should be beyond debate.  However, if that’s what you run on, then one should expect everything to be dug up.

This leads to the big question in regards to Mitt in the oval office.  What exactly does he plan to do?  What will he replace Obamacare (a/k/a: The Affordable Care Act or the program whose individual mandate Mitt enacted when he was governor of Massachusetts) with?  How exactly will he balance the budget without raising taxes, especially if defense spending goes up (as Romnyan says they want an increase)?    What programs will die to get the tax cut for the top 1%?    Romney has previously been tight lipped on actual specifics when asked and these details should come to light  

 In addition his annoyed reaction when the press asks questions regarding his campaign may have been considered acceptable as a CEO for Bain Capital.  However, becoming a politician means dealing with the press and this could be a problem for him is he gets elected.

UPDATE:
So where does Romnyan’s official debut as  a team stand?  Hard to say.  Given that Romney’s convention speech was overshadowed by Clint Eastwood and Invisible Obama,  whether he managed to actually pivot and gets swing voters is hard to say (especially with the Democratic Convention literally this coming week).  Also, when the ratings for the Convention are lower than for Honey Boo Boo, that’s kinda sad.  Time will tell on this. 

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